CEN13LA487 · Bell 206B
N M Land Bell 206B · Accident: fuel contamination while maneuvering
From Albers, IL to Pevely, MO
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA487
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Bell 206B
- Aircraft type
- Bell 206
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N804LA
- Operator
- N M Land
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albers, ILTo Pevely, MO
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Fuel contamination
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he performed a preflight inspection of the helicopter and noted no anomalies. Shortly after takeoff, at an altitude of 600 ft above ground level, the pilot initiated a turn, and, halfway through the turn, the engine lost power. The pilot reported that it seemed as though the throttle had rolled back and that he noticed a loss of N2 speed. The engine-out horn sounded, and the engine-out caution light illuminated, so the pilot located a cornfield in which to land, decreased the collective, and performed an autorotation. The helicopter settled into the cornfield and then rolled onto its left side during the landing, which resulted in the tailboom separating from the fuselage. Fuel samples taken from the fueling source and the fuel sump drain did not contain water. However, fuel samples taken from the airframe fuel filter housing contained water. The pilot would not have been able to detect the water in the airframe fuel filter when he checked the fuel sump during the preflight inspection. Maintenance records showed that the airframe fuel filter was changed 2.5 flight hours before the accident; however, it could not be determined how the water was introduced.
Probable cause
Fuel contamination, which resulted in the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA487
- Event ID
- 20130813X34141
- Case number
- CEN13LA487
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d413b85a793aaeee8659ec4f3e43a20eab63a5e42ba7060464cd319816a7d941; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:30:34.779Z.